"She pissed noisily on the bobbing eggs with total vigor and satisfaction."

Well, on my walk home yesterday I stopped at the bookstore to pick up The Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille (published under the pen name Lord Auch 1928, "Lord Auch" being derived from aux chiottes, "to the shitter," and Lord in reference to God- "God going to the shitter"). I didn't realize what a tiny volume it was, ending in about 100 pages of rather large font. I decided to read it and completed the whole thing in an hour or two, my mouth open in surprise the entire time.

(Warning: spoilers) This book is a marvel, grotesque and visceral. It's exceedingly pornographic, violent, and surreal. The main characters, Simone, Marcelle, Lord Edmund, and our narrator, partake in all kinds of bizarre and disturbingly masochistic sexual acts, making manifest the interesting relationship and discourse between sex and death. In the book, one is hardly able to be experienced without the other intruding in some way. Marcelle's death, the death of a bullfighter, and the death of the padre are closely bound with the sexual gratification of Simone and the narrator. The recurrence of eyes and eggs (and even the similarly shaped bull balls that appear near the end of the book) add to the surrealism of the book and connect to the author's troubled past. Simone's "deep sexuality" is piqued by the shape and texture of the eggs, and the mystery of the eye, not dissimilar to the former. She thrills at death and violence, as does the narrator. Interestingly, there exists a deep love on the part of the narrator for Simone, suggesting that perhaps their supposedly deviant behavior is actually one type of manifestation of romantic love. I'm still trying to wrap my head around a lot of the concepts in the book, like the eggs and eyes, and especially how religion plays into the story, and what Simone's mother's appearances may mean.

I'd say read it. It's certainly provocative and would be great to discuss in a class. Another interesting fact: Bjork read this in 1983 and said it changed her life. I don't know if it changed mine, but I'm betting I won't forget about it for a long time.

Now I'm starting Dracula.
With both eyes intact.

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

I'm embarking on a great literary journey. This is it. My friend MK has been reading a 100 best list since she started college, and after hearing her mention it in class one day, I decided to do the same, minus the starting college bit. I chose the Penguin must-read-before-you-die list after reviewing a few others. Of course, they're all biased. The Penguin list is imperfect, but I like its categories, and any book that includes The Story of the Eye can't be all bad (that's been recommended to me by a friend, and from what I hear it's quite a book... wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more).

Now, some of these books I've read:

1. The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
2. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
3. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
4. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
5. The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
6. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
7. The Time Machine by HG Wells
8. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
9. 1984 by George Orwell
10. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
11. The Iliad by Homer

I won't consider re-reading them until I finish the others, however many years (minutes?) from now that may be. That means I have 89 excellent pieces of literature to read. I'm starting with Dracula.

Ciao.